Sensory Bins – Page 3 – Butterbees and Bumbleflies

Farm Habitat

In our continuing series on various habitat sensory boxes (visit the Arctic/Antarctic here / visit my dino habitat here), this week I’m sharing our Farm Habitat with you!

We love the Safari Ltd Toob animals – and have a great little set called the “Petting Zoo” which includes two kids dressed in overalls (one holding a bottle) and several animals – most of which are farm animals. So, I pulled out the farm animals and I’m using them for this habitat. Then, I dumped the stuffing mix (from my sensory cooking post last year) into the box as their farm yard and added the animals and kids! Easy peasy, and super fun!! She loves making the animals “eat” the “hay” as she calls it. 🙂

Looking for additional farm fun for your kids? We love this little set of Melissa & Doug puzzles, as well as our farm train set that Santa brought to our two this Christmas!
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Farm in a Box Jigsaw Puzzles
KidKraft Farm Train Set

Dinosaur Habitat

The next few Tuesdays, I’ll be sharing some fun habitat sensory boxes with you. Becca absolutely loved her Arctic and Antarctic boxes that I made back in December, so I decided to make her some more small boxes!

Due to a lack of good storage/organization/planning on my part, we have a TON of wild bird seed. So it made a perfect base for her Dinosaur habitat! Add in a dinosaur Toob (Safari Ltd Dinos TOOB aff link here), a couple of palm trees from Party City, and you’re good to go!

“ROAR!”

Animal Habitat Sensory Play

The day after Thanksgiving, we got to spend a tiny little bit of time with my best friend and her family at their home, and I got an idea from her that has become one of Becca’s all-time-best-loved “actiperies” (she can totally say activities now, but she still calls them actiperies b/c she knows I think it’s cute. ha!). She has always had a big fascination with animals and their homes, but this takes it to a whole new level… so thank you, Rena, for the inspiration!!

Arctic Habitat

What you need:
Storage Container
Flour
Sugar
Powdered Sugar
Corn Starch
Safari Ltd Arctic TOOB (aff link – thank you!)

It’s super simple – use a little bit of each of the first four ingredients and stir it up in a container. Then add your Arctic TOOB animals, eskimos, and igloo, and you are ready to play!

An old toothbrush made a fun addition, and great fine motor practice – as she decided to brush the snow off of the animals and people.

Antarctic Habitat

What you need:
Storage Container
Rock Salt (I used Ice Cream Maker Salt… b/c it was on hand)
Kosher Salt
Table Salt
Safari Ltd Penguins TOOB

Same as above – add some salt and stir up in a container, add your penguins, and you’re ready to play!

We also added some play “snow” from our ornaments project because she really wanted to make it snow on the penguins. 🙂

If you’d like, you can print out the maps and titles I made to tape to your lids.
FREE PRINTABLE HERE!

Enjoy! And be prepared – the Arctic box’s “snow” might make dark clothes turn white. 😉

Christmas Treasure Box

Back in August in my post, Buried Treasure, I had made a little storage container of beans, and hidden pom poms. She enjoyed that activity for a while, and then I recycled the beans over to her sensory table for our big Thanksgiving activity… but the idea is BACK… for Christmas!

I was grocery shopping and on the dry goods aisle, I saw a bag of split peas, and there the idea was born. I grabbed that $0.88 bag, a $0.64 bag of rice, and I was done! I already had at home the other items needed for this box.

Here’s what I used:
1 bag split peas
1 bag rice
Mint extract (b/c it’s what I had, you could use essential oil)
Vinegar
Red food coloring (it pretty much took the whole tiny squeeze bottle for it to not look pink, so be prepared)
A large Ziploc bag
Wax paper
A large Ziploc storage box
Treasure, a scoop, and a bowl

So to make the rice red, you’ll dump your bag of rice into your big Ziploc bag (I used a gallon storage bag), add 2 Tbsp vinegar, and then lots of red. I think I ended up counting like 45 drops before I got it really red. The gel food coloring supposedly works better – I haven’t tried it b/c I just always use what I have. Thinking I’ll buy some next time. Then, if you’d like, add a few drops of your Mint scent – you could use Essential Oils if you have them, or if you happen to have Mint extract on hand from cooking, that will work too – that’s what I used. Shake it all up really good, and spread it out on wax paper to dry. Once it’s really, really dry (give it several hours), you can combine the peas and the red rice in the storage box. Then I had some little shatter proof ornaments ($1) and some cookie cutters I put in the box to be her “treasure.” She has LOVED hiding the items under the peas and rice and then digging them out. We even tried a candy cane ornament from the tree, as well as a bracelet. The possibilities for treasure are endless!

The best part about this activity was it’s cost and how quickly it all came together once the rice was dry – on a day we had a ton of other stuff going on, no less! And she loves it! SCORE!

Recycling Rocks!

I’ve had a lot going on lately… to say the least. So just this week I finally picked up all the signs of Halloween around the house and got them tucked away for next year. I wanted to do one more sensory bin for Becca before putting the water table up in the attic for the Christmas season (way too much stuff will be in our living room…), but WHAT? I wanted something fallish, but different from her pumpkin center. So I looked around and found some items that have long since been forgotten… her fall leaves number tree, her box of beans (minus the pom poms), and her tub of beans, leaves, and pumpkins. And I’m pretty pleased with what I came up with! (And she was, too!)

I emptied all of the beans, leaves, and pumpkins I could find into the main part of the water table, put her rake and shovel with the number tree in the top, and then put the Indian corn in a festive pumpkin basket that she can’t seem to get enough of (she hauls the thing all over the house at least twice a day). She loved digging around using her tools, and just running her fingers through the beans again. “This is fun, Mommy! I like it better in here than that other place.” So see, part of my problem before had been not enough space to dig in! Now we know. The container really DOES make a difference, and this water table (affiliate link – thank you!) is FABULOUS for way more than just water play!

I also showed her how she can pull the silks off the Indian corn and make fun strings, and how to pop the corn kernels off (into the table), which she had a blast doing! Once she tired of it, she immediately pulled the fall number tree out, and we did that together. Such fun to revisit old favorites – in a new format! Recycling really does rock, ya’ll. No need to throw out those activities because she was seemingly done with them! Just gotta find a way to make things new!

What activities do you have around your house that could stand to be recycled or “up cycled” into something new and different?